President of The Acropolis Museum in Athens, Greece, gave a wonderful lecture

The Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, and its Classics Program, in conjunction with the President and Provost of USC, were proud to sponsor a public lecture by Dimitrios Pandermalis, distinguished archaeologist and President and Curator of the Acropolis Museum in Athens, Greece. The lecture took place Thursday, April 4, at 6 p.m. in the Campus Room, Capstone Hall on the USC Campus, and was entitled, “The Acropolis Museum: Architecture, Collections, and Visitors.”

The new Acropolis Museum opened June 20, 2009. Its architect is Bernard Tschumi. It was designed to house the wealth of recovered antiquities on the Acropolis and reunify all the surviving pieces of the unique architectural sculptures of the Parthenon. It was built on stilts or piles over the excavations necessary to its construction, which are incorporated into the Museum. Its collections include architectural sculptures from the most famous buildings from Classical antiquity. Most of its sculpture is connected to important artists, thus making history visible and real. The top floor, in direct view of the Parthenon, is missing some pieces of the Parthenon sculpture: about half of these materials are not in Athens, because the monument was separated in the early nineteenth century, and the so-called Elgin Marbles are partly in the British Museum. Dimitrios Pandermalis is Professor of Archaeology in Aristotle University, Thessaloniki (northern Greece), and President and Curator of the Acropolis Museum. Rarely does the Classics Program have the honor of hosting such a distinguished visitor. Many people both within and outside USC, interested in archaeology, classical history, museum curatorship, and Greece, joined us for this event.